


but then he’s still left with his hands

by astrotxt



Category: Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: M/M, No Raven King Spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-25
Updated: 2016-09-25
Packaged: 2018-08-17 04:09:34
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,360
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8129929
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/astrotxt/pseuds/astrotxt
Summary: “Well, I looked. It’s like a photocopy, a creepy, lifelike photocopy,” he almost laughs, if not for Ronan's flinch at ‘creepy’. “It’s not your fault, y’know.”“You, of all people, should not fucking quote Good Will Hunting at me, Parrish,” Ronan snarls.--Ronan dreams up an Adam that Parrish recognises all too well. Set in and around trk.





	

St. Agnes has this unholy quiet that settles something deep in Adam's chest at six in the afternoon. That liminal dusk-esque layer where, really, anything can happen. And it has. He’s looking at it- _him_ right now. _He_ has a pretty impressive scowl, impressive for the forgery, of course. Adam has seen a version of it in the bathroom every morning for as long as he can remember.

Adam is not so much surprised that he’s staring at his dream-doppelgänger, more that he finds that, deep down, he expected to face this particular peculiarity sooner.

“Do I look like an endangered species? Stop staring,” Dream-Adam snarls, nursing the bandage on his arm. It’s badly swaddled. Ronan’s better with flesh wounds than he is.

Adam wants to say that this dream made flesh is a cheap copy, like looking in a funhouse mirror. It’s unsettling because it’s not. He’s not staring for incomprehensibility, more for flaws, in glaringly plain sight. But he’s… well. Perfect. In as much as any version of Adam Parrish can be perfect. From the ragged quicks of his fingernails to the dusty crop of hair that refuses to hide his birthright to the piercing nature of his eyes, like broken glass glinting off the roadside. Even the way Dream-Adam holds his accent back like an unleashed mutt, fear masquerading as empowerment. As good breeding. It has unearthed him, a little.

“You’d do the same,” he quirks back, softer; an attempt, anyway. Gansey’s so much better at this whole… comfort and console nonsense.

Dream-Adam scoffs. “You don’t know that.”

He doesn’t, maybe. What shakes him to the core is that Ronan does. Ronan knows, which is impossible because Adam is unknowable. He is mystery shrouded in deep forest magic drenched in engine oil. But that’s Ronan’s gimmick, right? He plays with impossibility behind his eyelids every night. He sits to the right of his dreams every Sunday, he cups his dreams and gives them to unknowable boys, he protects their motley crew with the products of a nap. To dream up a version of Adam that’s better, that can give him what he wants… it’s child’s play. A lump makes itself comfortable in his stomach, the idea of Ronan using him like a blow-up doll, even one with more dimensions than he even thinks he possesses. A fleeting fear passes through him, that he could be replaced by a walking cutout, a dreamer’s dream that’s inherently more magical. Cabeswater only bears so much fruit.

“You’re right,” Adam says slowly, his eyes trailing down to Dream-Adam’s lap. “What- what are you here for?”

Dream-Adam moves, imperceptibly to anyone but, well, himself, and swallows. “I don’t know.”

For the umpteenth time in the last twenty minutes, Adam wishes Ronan wasn’t having a conniption downstairs, wasn’t begging for forgiveness. He’d woken up, taken one look at both Adams and escaped. Lucky asshole. Adam didn’t even know what had happened to take Dream-Adam out, what Ronan had wanted, why he was here. Adam had assumed it was something NC-17, but Dream-Adam was clothed, in the same outfit he’d worn for their trip to Greenmantle. A shiver goes up his back at the thought, but he tamps it down like a fresh grave.

Still, curiosity is part of the package: “Why did- what dream did you come from?”

Dream-Adam looks reluctant, but he’s probably figured that Ronan “I- It was dark.”

Adam lets out a soft whoosh of air. He’d been afraid of this when he started this pseudo-interrogation, but hearing it out loud-

“Ronan was… well,” Dream-Adam chews at raw, chapped lips, “He tried to kiss me.”

“Tried to?”

“I pushed him.”

Unbidden, but undeniable, he blurts, “Why?”

“Same reason as you would,” Dream-Adam squints hard, giving Adam no room for escape, “right?”

“You mean you don’t..?” Ronan’s tendencies towards masochism have always been his bane, but this version, his very own Adam, couldn’t possibly-

“Want him? No,” he shakes with a rage Adam has never directed at Ronan, never about something like this. It’s the tone of him having to reject another of Gansey’s blatant handouts. “I don’t want that. Him.”

“Why not?” He can hear the defence in his own voice, hear the hurt on Ronan’s behalf, which he’d rather not look into. Thankfully, Dream-Adam’s rage makes that far too easy.

“What the hell do you mean, why not? We want out, we’ve always wanted out!” His shout fills the room and shatters the unholy quiet.

Oh. It wasn’t a dream. Of course it wasn’t a dream. Ronan’s dreams are golden-haired brothers that are a halo short of sainthood, loyal ravens, beautiful, impossible things. There isn’t a single version of Adam that could exist that could belong in Ronan’s head that would be worthy of that mantle. Adam Parrish can only belong in nightmares. He’s no better than a horror for the way he claws through Ronan.

“Why did he take you out?” It sounds choked, but he can’t help it.

“Night horror. It was chasing us and- and he was here so.”

“So?”

“He was here. With you? God, you’re meant to be the real one, how can you be so dense?”

Suddenly the flaws crack through the surface. Adam’s sharpness multiplied into scalpel-slashes, precise and sure and Ronan-like. His hatred. He’s never- well, not never, but, he doesn’t anymore. Something twists inside him, and for once it’s not Cabeswater. He’s so cruel, and that- God, he wants to scream. He thought if anyone saw him, if anyone had a chance to see through the inextricable layers of his bullshit, it would be Ronan, and isn’t that just the kicker? Unknowable Adam just wants to be known right. Not this nightmare-perfect cruelty that Ronan uses to self-flagellate for his, what, cowardice? His hesitation?

As if summoned, Ronan cracks through his door, stares between them without actually looking, and whips into the bathroom. Barely a moment and a rummage later, he comes through with the bargain-bin first-aid kit he watched Adam buy three weeks ago. Silently, he unravels Dream-Adam’s arm with a hiss. It’s a clean cut that’s been eating away at the edges. Acid. Ronan takes out a flash of holy water and, of course, because they live in Bram Stoker’s wet dream, it starts to knit the skin back together. In fact, the skin mends itself so quickly, it’s like the mark was never there.

Adam watches this all with barely-contained questions. Ronan doesn’t look at him. Dream-Adam doesn’t look at Ronan, his eyes steadily trained on the left-hand corner of the room. Adam wants to hurt him, so fucking badly.

“Did you call Maura?” Adam asks.

“Yeah.”

“And?”

“She’ll take him tonight. You can still make your shift, don’t worry,” he murmurs it, putting the holy water and the first aid kit away.

Adam shoots for levity, “Calla’s gonna have a field day.”

Dream-Adam snorts. Ronan still doesn’t look at him.

* * *

 

Finally alone, he stares at the ceiling, watching for ways that it might have changed from the previous night. He has to be up in less than two hours, but he can’t get the pure apathy of Dream-Adam’s face out of his mind. He tries to focus on Cabeswater, on climbing vines that crawl over Dream-Adam’s face, to obscure his view, if only for a moment, but Cabeswater doesn’t budge. It won’t let him. He lets out a deep sigh and rolls onto his face. Maybe he’ll suffocate before he has to work through any of this, before he leaves Henrietta, before they find Glendower, before today’s shift at the factory.

He’s angry, but it’s so hollow, he’s not sure if he’s even allowed to feel it. His anger takes so many forms these days, a coiled spring that multiplies with every flashback to his father’s fists. He wakes up feverish with the thought that the hair on his head isn’t the only thing that’s genetic. Dream-Adam is just a manifestation that Ronan has somehow seen and used against himself, and it shocks Adam how much that pains him. Ronan has so many demons, some which have flown into reality. Adam never thought he’d be part of that particular roster, but perhaps the fear of Ronan’s… affections, for want of a better, more Gansey word, is just another reason he is.

He wonders if Dream-Adam does, somehow, deep down, love Ronan the way Ronan should- wants to be loved. He wonders if Dream-Adam is so all-consumed by his desire to escape every trailer-park he sees in the corners of Henrietta that he just disposes of those feelings. He doesn’t have a right to them. He wonders if Dream-Adam even has the capability to love, if he’s as well-drawn as all that, if Ronan sees enough to know that. Maybe that makes the punishment all the more apt. Adam wonders if he’ll ever escape, and wonders enough for Dream-Adam, too. He closes his eyes and all he sees is Ronan, forever not meeting his eye.

He hears shuffling outside his door and opens his eyes. His vision swims as he grasps across his mattress. He feels rather than thinks, fuck it.

He opens his door to find, of course, Ronan, curled up against the wall. His own personal watchdog. He wishes Ronan could see himself as more than that. Ronan looks up, uncharacteristically soft in his open-mouthed surprise, but before he can omit any truths:

“Do all dreams heal so quickly?” Adam demands.

Ronan closes his mouth. His skin, normally a polished tan like the stripped bark of Cabeswater’s citizens, seems darker underneath his blush. Adam comes far too close to calling it “lovely.”

“No. Just him,” Ronan says, low and clear.

Adam steps aside for Ronan to come in. Ronan seems to glide in, careful not to touch any angle that Adam presents him with. Adam closes the door and strokes his palm down the splintered wood, following the grain for a breath.

“I didn’t mean for this to happen,” Ronan says with the nature of a blurt but the grace of a confession. “I’m not sure how to send him back.”

“I don’t think Cabeswater does either, or if so, it won’t tell me,” Adam confesses to the door. Ronan shuffles behind him and Adam turns. Ronan won’t meet his eyes again, and frustration kicks up dust in Adam’s chest. “Look at me.”

Ronan does, like he’s compelled. “Fuck, Parrish. Bossy, tonight.”

“Better than evasive,” he shoots back, and this is them, Adam thinks, this easy back and forth. This wavelength they’re tapped into. “Is he… settled now?”

“He’s pissed.”

Adam snorts, “Yeah, that sounds about right. He is me, after all.”

Ronan shifts.

“He’s not,” he says it definitively. He says it more than truthfully, like it’s irrefutable fact. It released the tight knot in his heart, that the lovingly-traced punishment wearing his face at 300 Fox Way isn’t Ronan’s Adam. There’s a chance for redemption, even in the realm of dreams and nightmares. He swallows around the flailing truth in his throat.

“Well, I looked. It’s like a photocopy, a creepy, lifelike photocopy,” he almost laughs, if not for Ronan's flinch at ‘creepy’. “It’s not your fault, y’know.”

“You, of all people, should not fucking quote Good Will Hunting at me, Parrish,” Ronan snarls.

“I’m serious. It’s not your fault, you did what you had to. He told me,” and if Adam thought Ronan flinched before, he damn near makes a hole in St. Agnes’s roof.

“What did he say?”

“That you tried to kiss him,” Adam takes one step closer. His heart hammers against his chest, fingernails digging a cemetery into his palms. “That he pushed you away.”

“Adam, I-"

“Which I thought was weird, considering how, in every other aspect, he seemed so real. Suspension of disbelief only goes so far, and that- that really cut it.”

He steps forward again and Ronan’s so much closer. He can see the flecks of green in those very blue eyes, wide and searching. Adam expected them to be lidded, but he’s cautious.

“Parrish, fuck off,” lacking heat, lacking anything but a choked-up surrender.

Adam keeps his hands to himself, just about. “Is that what you want?”

Ronan puts a hand between them, just one, resting against Adam’s racing heart for a second before backing off. Neither of them move.

Adam can’t help but ask. “Is he the only one?”

He can practically feel the air change around them as Ronan steels himself. “No,” he says, and every hair on Adam’s neck stands up with the conviction, “you are.”

Adam’s skin, unstripped bark and twice as rough, is on fire. He reaches a careful palm up, looks into Ronan’s eyes, looks desperately for benediction, looks for the indication that this is truly his, that this Ronan wasn’t dreamt up for Adam’s insecurities. Ronan falters, so slight and trembling, that Adam can’t help but touch a finger to that seemingly blade-like cheekbone. He touches and finds something gentler. He finds Ronan, slipping his eyes shut, Ronan, letting out a shuddering sigh, Ronan, loving and silent and real. This is not a dream.

Adam leans forward and kisses the place where his eyebrow has furrowed, and Ronan opens his eyes to receive another kiss on his mouth. Soft and giving, so unreal that it doesn’t belong in Adam’s head. Ronan’s hands bunch in his loose tank and he’s so careful not to bite and snarl.

Adam takes those hands and releases them, letting his other hand slip between Ronan’s fingers. Ronan almost chokes on a small moan. He takes from Adam’s mouth, still hesitant, still unsure, and Adam gives and gives and takes for himself in turn. It doesn’t taste like charity, but benediction. He breaks away for a moment, takes both hands and traces his thumbs over Ronan’s cheeks, damp now where they weren’t before. His eyes are bright and fierce, caught in the act. Fear, Adam wonders, bewildered. Adam kisses the paths his hands have made, sighs into the space between them. He has to close his eyes to tell the truth. It’s still so new.

“For what it’s worth, I dreamt you, too."


End file.
